We have answered by helping eight million veterans of World War II to obtain advanced education, 196 thousand to start in business, and 64 thousand to buy farms.

We have answered by continuing to help farmers obtain electric power, until today nearly 90 per cent of our farms have power line electric service.

In these and other ways, we have demonstrated, up to now, that our democracy has not forgotten how to use the powers of the Government to promote the people’s welfare and security.

Another of the big post-war questions was this:  What we would do with the Nation’s natural resources—­its soils and water, forests and grasslands.  Would we continue the strong conservation movement of the 1930’s, or would we, as we did after the First World War, slip back into the practices of monopoly, exploitation, and waste?

The answer is plain.  All across our country, the soil conservation movement has spread, aided by Government programs, enriching private and public lands, preserving them from destruction, improving them for future use.  In our river basins, we have invested nearly 5 billion dollars of public funds in the last eight years—­invested them in projects to control floods, irrigate farmlands, produce low-cost power and get it to the housewives and farmers and businessmen who need it.  We have been vigilant in protecting the people’s property—­lands and forests and oil and minerals.

We have had to fight hard against those who would use our resources for private greed; we have met setbacks; we have had to delay work because of defense priorities, but on the whole we can be proud of our record in protecting our natural heritage, and in using our resources for the public good.

Here is another question we had to face at the war’s close:  Would we continue, in peace as well as war, to promote equality of opportunity for all our citizens, seeking ways and means to guarantee for all of them the full enjoyment of their civil rights?

During the war we achieved great economic and social gains for millions of our fellow citizens who had been held back by prejudice.  Were we prepared, in peacetime, to keep on moving toward full realization of the democratic promise?  Or would we let it be submerged, wiped out, in post-war riots and reaction, as after World War I?

We answered these questions in a series of forward steps at every level of government and in many spheres of private life.  In our armed forces, our civil service, our universities, our railway trains, the residential districts of our cities—­in stores and factories all across the Nation—­in the polling booths as well—­the barriers are coming down.  This is happening, in part, at the mandate of the courts; in part, at the insistence of Federal, State and local governments; in part, through the enlightened action of private groups and persons in every region and every walk of life.

There has been a great awakening of the American conscience on the issues of civil rights.  And all this progress—­still far from complete but still continuing—­has been our answer, up to now, to those who questioned our intention to live up to the promises of equal freedom for us all.